Say Hello to Walt Heyer 2.0

As I have possibly alluded to in this space on previous occasions, the right-wing Culture War Dominionist Pharisees who co-own the Republican Party are a never-exhausted fountain of anti-trans bigotry and propaganda. Not that they have stopped with also generating a steady supply of bigotry about gays and lesbians, Muslims, immigrants, and any other convent “other” that wanders into their sites, but boy are they acting like they’ve struck gold in terms of trans people being a foolproof target for their hatefulness.

One of the reliable sources of that bigotry is “The Daily Signal” (no link here because duh) which is a publication of The Heritage Foundation. They are, of course, an outfit that only exists to transform this country into a proto-theocracy based on Evangelical religious doctrines. Given that they are a leading mover in the broader universe of Culture War media and political activism, they circulate the same “usual suspect” writers among themselves, regularly regurgitating the same basic talking points designed to mislead and antagonize the ill-informed consumers of their unscientific and inaccurate propaganda. Among those is a man named Walt Heyer.

You may be familiar with him but, if not, here’s a short bio reflecting how he describes himself in his biography. In the late 70’s, before the screening process was as well honed as it is today, Heyer convinced a perhaps sloppy psychologist that he was transsexual when, in fact, he suffered from dissociative disorder and transitioned fully, including surgically in the early 80’s. He lived as a female for several years, then had an attack of religious conversion and became guilt ridden that he’d violated God’s design and detransitioned. Since then he’s morphed into the Evangelical’s poster child for detransition, pushing the narrative that his having been mistaken, and regretting it, proves that there is no such thing as an authentic trans person who actually needs to transition.

He makes a nice living, writing and speaking on the circuit and he has a website (no, I’m not linking that trash) upon which he collects anecdotes, few though they be, of others who regretted transition. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of those anecdotes reflect one of two eventualities — a person who is not saying they were not trans, but rather testify that transitioning cost them more than they were willing to pay (their career, their church, contact with their kids, etc). That is, the pressure applied by society forced them to renege. The other main storyline is “I found a relationship with god and conquered my sinful desires”. These too are succumbing to a sort of social pressure, the pressure found in organized religion to conform, and the free application of guilt until you comply. But old Walt is getting a bit long in the tooth to be the lone prominent representation of trans regret and you can only recycle the same narrative so many times. Or can you?

Enter Jamie Shupe.

Generally I am loath to directly respond to anti-trans crap on sites like TDS or The Federalist (where Shupe has published similar hot mess articles for a year and a half) or WND directly because to do so would mean I could never write enough rebuttals to keep up. But since we have a relatively new player in the arena, and since his offering is such a poorly written, trope-ridden, rehash of tired claims, begged questions, unfounded assumptions, and claims that look suspiciously like lies, let me make an exception and pick through the trash for salient points to respond to, just this once.

Shupe is a retired army Sargent who first transitioned six years ago and in the DS piece published this weekend, links his contribution to a series of NYT profiles (to which I also contributed here) which provides a snapshot of how (s)he viewed the world five years ago. It is quite informative to read and contrast the former comments with the current ones. Shortly thereafter, he shifted his professed identity to nonbinary and became a mid-sized news story in equality circles when he became the first person in America legally recognized as neither male or female. This might seem odd to some but while it is a minority of cases, it is not horribly uncommon among transgender people for a person who’s early in their journey to have to sort through their expression of themselves before finding the reality that fits. For example, many trans women go through a relatively extensive phase of trying to manage their dysphoria by being “just a crossdresser” before eventually understanding that it’s not sufficient to “play with” being female.

Shupe’s account of his evolution to having legally reasserted a male gender has some red flags that deserve to be addressed.

“After convincing myself that I was a woman during a severe mental health crisis, I visited a licensed nurse practitioner in early 2013 and asked for a hormone prescription. “If you don’t give me the drugs, I’ll buy them off the internet,” I threatened.
Although she’d never met me before, the nurse phoned in a prescription for 2 mg of oral estrogen and 200 mg of Spironolactone that very same day.”

This is reflective of a practice known as “informed consent” and is by no means a model exclusive to transgender transition. In cases where an individual is unable to follow the Standard of Care recommendations for psychological pre-screening (often due to burdensome expense not covered by insurance or simple lack of availability) or, less often, simply unwillingness to do so, a practitioner using the Informed Consent model will advise the patient of all the benefits and risks associated with their choice and if the patient elects to accept the risk, the responsibility lies with them. Shupe here, as Heyer always did before, attempts to shift guilt and imply the practitioner was unethical when he, Shupe, accepted the responsibility by demanding the prescriptions. Culture Warriors prefer a world in which medical professional get to render a religious based judgement upon whether or not the care you seek aligns with their own personal morals concerning how you should behave. See for reference, the whole abortion debate.

“I have chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, having previously served in the military for almost 18 years. All of my doctors agree on that. Others believe that I have bipolar disorder and possibly borderline personality disorder.”

Here, like Heyer, Shupe reveals that they represent an atypical case, not one representative of transgender people in general. He’ll go on to ignore that distinction in the same way Heyer has been doing for decades.

“ All I needed to do was switch over my hormone operating fuel and get my penis turned into a vagina. Then I’d be the same as any other woman. That’s the fantasy the transgender community sold me. It’s the lie I bought into and believed.”

Put a pin in this. It’s relevant to a later quote.

“ There’s abundant online literature informing transgender people that their sex change isn’t real. But when a licensed medical doctor writes you a letter essentially stating that you were born in the wrong body and a government agency or court of law validates that delusion, you become damaged and confused. I certainly did.”

This bit is simply a straight up regurgitation of Pharisee opinion presented as fact. The only “abundant information” informing trans people that they “aren’t real” comes from, you guessed it, right wing culture war outlets masking their doctrine with a busted mask of faulty science claims. DS is essentially saying here that “you would know you aren’t real if you’d just listen to us and not those pesky doctors and scientists who aren’t slaves to our theology.”

“Dr. Ray Blanchard has an unpopular theory that explains why someone like me may have been drawn to transgenderism. He claims there are two types of transgender women: homosexuals that are attracted to men, and men who are attracted to the thought or image of themselves as females.
It’s a tough thing to admit, but I belong to the latter group. We are classified as having autogynephilia.”

It’s unpopular because it is demonstrable and long debunked nonsense (from a man who has his own perversions and is hardly a neutral actor). Just previous to this quote Shupe described having been traumatized by being raised in a violent environment. Fair enough. But he says nothing which explains why PTSD from that experience could or should lead to defaulting into “autogynephilia.” He just expects the reader to assume a one-to-one connection without any supporting evidence.

“ The women who become men don’t fight the transgender community’s wars. The men in dresses do.”

The phrasing here is revealing. Perhaps unintentionally, Shupe here conceded by implication that trans men are legitimate, while clinging to the trope that trans women are “men in dresses.” This is said in the course of trying to pit trans women as the enemy of feminists (as if the Heritage Foundation suddenly carries a brief for the interest of feminists). I’m sure it’s a rookie mistake.

“ The medical community is so afraid of the trans community that they’re now afraid to give someone Blanchard’s diagnosis.”

This nonsense has it’s roots in the right-wingers urge to paint the Other as dangerous, powerful, something to be frightened of (“so please send us your money and vote like you’re told and we will save you from the monster we’re warning you about!”) and yet, objectively, out and recognized trans people are less than one half of one percent of the general population. Those among us speaking up for equality and respect are a tiny proportion of even that. We have higher unemployment rates, by far, than any other demographic and thereby less wealth than any other. We live on the margins of society, most of us under laws that explicitly allow for us to be discriminated against at will. Shupe’s own testimonial in the NYT describes the failure to get even the most basic respect while in the care (for other reasons) of medical professionals. Yet . . .somehow . . .this same marginalized group of people is able to intimidate the entire medical profession into tossing out everything they know to be right and true and cowardly rubber stamping our every bizarre desire lest they suffer our wrath? REALLY?

How is it then when often well-to-do white suburban teens showed up at 90 pounds insisting they were fat the medical community didn’t cave and begin prescribing them diet pills? That’s just one potential example but the point is that the implication is so insane it could only be published as a legitimate claim by these Pharisees who are fully aware of how gullible their intended target audience of marks is.

“Three years into my gender change from male to female, I looked hard into the mirror one day. When I did, the facade of femininity and womanhood crumbled.
Despite having taken or been injected with every hormone and antiandrogen concoction in the VA’s medical arsenal, I didn’t look anything like a female. People on the street agreed. Their harsh stares reflected the reality behind my fraudulent existence as a woman. Biological sex is immutable.”

Remember that pinned quote? Let’s pick that up now. In this Shupe outs the actual mentality behind his dissatisfaction. He fell into the false belief that to transition to female meant to transition into an ATTRACTIVE female. Earlier in the piece he mentions have tried to turn his wife into the “ideal woman” (whatever his own porn-fueled notion of “ideal” was) and he apparently held his own womanhood to that same high standard. News flash: VERY few cis-women, particularly those in their forties, get anywhere NEAR that idealized caricature and a much larger percentage of middle-aged women look like, according to Shupe’s high standards, something less than real women.

One is forced to wonder, is Shupe’s late-onset transphobia really a manifestation of not having been trans, or is it a reaction to the crushing disappointment of not transforming into a porn-star beauty? In more than one of his columns he freely riffs on his lack of breast development, for example, as if somehow his failure to grow natural DDs disproves the whole of scientific research related to transgender people. Confronted with this disappointment, rather than re-examining the source of his elevated expectations, he concludes that the Transgender Illuminati brainwashed him into thinking he’d look like a Kardashian sister.

Shupe goes on to discuss his decision to shift his identity to non-binary (given his disappointment in his failure to become beautiful) and the resulting minor celebrity status that flowed from being the first person to be legally designated neither male or female in the U.S. In the course of doing so he makes a claim i find radically dubious:

“ A Pennsylvania judge didn’t question the name change, either. Wanting to help a transgender person, she had not only changed my name, but at my request she also sealed the court order, allowing me to skip out on a ton of debt I owed because of a failed home purchase and begin my new life as a woman.”

It goes without saying that, even in the unlikely event this is true and not a fiction added for dramatic effect, it says nothing about legal respect for trans people and only that the judge made an unethical choice. Rhetorical question: Since Shupe here cops to defrauding his creditor, has he reclaimed or repaid that debt? Whatever the judge’s choice, an ethical person would be obliged to do so would they not? Moving on…

“It wasn’t until I came out against the sterilization and mutilation of gender-confused children and transgender military service members in 2017 that LGBT organizations stopped helping me. Most of the media retreated with them. Overnight, I went from being a liberal media darling to a conservative pariah.”

Now here’s where things get interesting again. We have here a person who’d enjoyed minor celebrity status and been hailed (unwisely) as a hero for basically being in the right place at the right time, yet when activist organizations (naturally) found his opinions problematic they turned the spotlight elsewhere — and, maybe, just maybe, Shupe missed the attention. Not to worry though! There’s nothing the Pharisees like so much as elevating their former monsters to noble hero status if they go “off message” and say things that support their goals. (Witness these same groups recent love affair with a TERF lesbian from Baltimore who, in every other context, is one of the monsters they warn the sheep about. But she gets a temporary waiver for being a feminist lesbian monster long enough for them to mike her up for her criticism of trans women). If Shupe missed the spotlight, the Culture Warriors were only too happy to set up a new one. Of course, the price of admission is that you still aren’t speaking with your own voice. If he went “off message” on them he’d revert to being a monster again and have no refuge left to stroke his ego.

“Two fake gender identities couldn’t hide the truth of my biological reality. There is no third gender or third sex. Like me, intersex people are either male or female. Their condition is the result of a disorder of sexual development, and they need help and compassion.”

Ultimately, for all the effort to frame the experience as indicative of some larger cultural problem, Shupe fails into the same tired trope Heyer has been pushing all along: “MY experience with transitioning was unsatisfactory, therefore by definition there is no such thing as a satisfactory and authentic transgender transition. What rubbish. I could cite a thousand counter-example without very much effort at all, but for brevity in an already too-long post, consider Jennifer Finny Boylan. For literally every single complaint Shupe might offer as a reason why transition is a sham, there’s a major aspect of Boylan’s life that crushes the narrative in it’s cradle. She has a wonderful supportive successful marriage, kids who love her deeply, a full and fruitful faith life, great and growing professional success in multiple fields, immense respect in all of them, gentle grace and good humor through it all — and yet she still experiences transphobia on occasion from hateful bigots who cannot be happy that she is happy. But she is. Happy.

So am I. I am not professionally accomplished nor widely respected in any field. I struggled for years to re-win the heart of my wife. I have been far too broke, unemployed, and/or uninsured to have addressed my physical needs on the schedule I would have wished. I live in the very heartland of religion inspired bigotry, and have been well known to them for almost a decade. But I am happy. I am alive where Ialmost certainly would not have been had I not transitioned. Certainly not for lack of trying. Shupe’s self absorbed needy whining about whatever dissatisfied him about his experience doesn’t invalidate the reality of Boylan’s life, or of the other millions of successful positive transition outcomes, and sure as hell doesn’t erase my own experience.

Ultimately, I would not presume to dictate to Shupe whether or not he was ever trans, whether his choices at any stage including detransition were made rationally or not, whether his current or former motives were noble or devious. He is free in all respects to seek his highest quality of life in whatever form that takes. But I demand the same respect from him, and absent that respect I will call bullshit on every word that emerges from his keyboard about trans people. His story is just that, HIS story, and it carries no weight whatsoever in understanding mine or anyone elses. The fact that he allows himself to be a puppet of bigots who seek to strip me of my rights and freedoms makes him my enemy, regardless of his experience. Perhaps the profit margin will be worth the cost of his remaining integrity.